As a GM, always been Homebrew. Occasionally used published bits and pieces. As a player: most of the time homebrew, but heavier than I usually do on the published bits. (Like whole adventures stitched into the world.)
As a GM, making it up is one of the big pleasures, why skip it?

I think the ultimate answer is "none", isn't it?
I have little essays I wrote on the theology of the main religion in my GH game (a fairly elaborate variation on St Cuthbert, Pholtus, Tritherion and others as branches of a monotheistic religion). What was the point? Self-amusement. Taking my readings on Christology and metaphysics out for a bit of a spin. Some of the political/I] differences...

Agreed. If you're still working through the past 50-100 posts, you may come across one of mine that talks about contradictions in fiction.
I don't know about your super-mathematician PC, but mine has the power to square a circle with compass and ruler! And if there is some downtime, spends it drawing up plans for ever-cheaper-to-build perpetual motion machines.
Fictional causation is...

Erg. I haven't read the details of that for years. Hm.
PbPs take forever usually. So I'd either just lay it out as a background thing, or make it ultra simplified. Morrus, I don't recall James's screen name to ping him, but maybe he could use this as a baseline for converting this scene in the 5e version, which should probably be more rules-lite.
This is really fast and rough. I'd...

Rod of Seven Farts. This jesterís bauble can cause any creature affected by its magic to emit a loud, smelly fart. It may be used up to seven times in one day, with a range of line of sight. The targeting is NOT automatic, the wielder must make a successful ranged attack, if it misses, the magic effects a target in the vicinity- use the thrown grenade-like weapons rules to determine the new...

Its been 25 years since I perused my copy of WoG, so I don't remember exactly what was established by Gygax about The Great Kingdom WRT Vecna or if this was all generated in the course of pemerton's game, but IN MY GAMES at least the existence of Vecna and his goals would only be introduced as a factor in response to a player's establishment of a goal (as a player) and a consequent dramatic need...

The duration is pretty crucial to it all. Unlike Hexblade, who's features last 24/7, the Bestower's abilities only last while transformed.
I have limited the transformation to 1 hour, meaning the Bestower has less access to its abilities.
I have limited the amount of marks(which I only made unlimited in the first place because I thought Hexblade's get unlimited curses level 14) to a...

Iíve cut my teeth as a DM running the published adventures (in FR of course) but in future i want to take published adventures but move them to new settings (mostly inspired by M:tG planes). The FR is too unfocused for my taste it seems.

This wasn't intended at all. While transformed, the armor class becomes 18. Not 18 + dex. The transformation armor class is an entirely different armor class calculation. Just like when a character has two different armor class abilities, they choose which one they go with, not combine them.
This wasn't intended at all. Magically creating weapons doesn't mean the weapons are considered...

I don't think I understand the question. When you ask "are they free to engage in those", are you asking about the scope of permissible action declarations? In which case it will depend on the details of the action in question, and whether the fictional positioning supports them.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "follow the situation you set up that forces those choices." When Xanthos says...

I was looking for character sheets ... but I never dreamed to find something like this .... it's just wonderful
is there a way to override the level or change the XP table? ... I would like to have a slower leveling
Thx ...

I don't know that anyone else has really responded to your post, have they? (If Saelorn has, then I can't read it because he's blocked me again.)
In any event, I don't think accusations of insincerity are very helpful. You think I've misunderstood you. I think you've misunderstood me.
For instance, you say "YOU and only YOU had the authority to include something that would play to their...

My point was that they're not hiding any backstory. There is no hidden backstory, no unrevealed fiction, in your example. What the GM and Mary are hiding is that the thief in question is Mary's player character.
As far as I can tell, the only interesting thing about the episode you describe is that the NPC is, in fact, a PC. Mary is the one who has sent that up - so she is not a bystander, she...

D&D isn't a novel, movie, or story. D&D is just pretending to be someone else, in a different world, doing different things with different (often much greater) stakes.
How often do you, in the real world, think "I can't let myself fail"? How often do you think "this puts us in an interesting situation" or "this gives me room to grow"? Being a magical elf is a lot like that, except if you fail...

Blast. Like so many things, I suppose it was just too good to last.
Thank you Forged. Your sheet is BY FAR the best our group has ever used. And we will go on using it, although really bummed we never saw the full implementation of the XGtE content. :(
R.I.P.

Ask nicely, or not so nicely all you want. This is a public forum, I have not violated any rules of conduct that I know of. If a moderator wants to correct me I'm sure they will.
While I may have waxed a bit philosophical in some of my posts, I am trying to contribute because I do think if you have a magic mart then it is a valid question to ask how much items should cost. However,...

You are overlooking the most radical mechanic of Perceptive:
That is a huge swing in Perceptive's favor. It negates Disadvantage. Which in turn means it can preserve Advantage.
The Common sources of "Dim Light" are:
Using torches to light up a dungeon.
Moonlight at night, or at dusk/dawn.
Cloudy days.

Really? I always thought the appeal of the core books was that they were more rules than setting...which is why we have separate setting/adventure books.
Because I'm totally cool with different lore in CoS or OotA or SKT or whatever.
But I understandably am always looking at D&D from a card-game background. You can produce as many sets in as many different locations with as many different...

Yep bear totem hands down biggest baddest meat shield and if you want to give up damage add a shield instead of two handed weapon for more ac
Second I would say fighter EK's using shield, absorb elements spells and later blur I find them to me more tanky than Battlemaster and I like battle master fighter class
Depending on how high of levels you are planning you could go Fighter/ wiz or...

To be fair, that's exactly what happened with the feats and multiclassing rules. No matter how much they tried to claim that those rules are optional, every player in these forums seems to have assumed that they are automatically in-play and that any DM who doesn't allow those is being unreasonable.
I can't find it at the moment, due to the recent forums reorganization, but I recall seeing a...

This post presents a timeline for the history of Homeworld, along with suggestions for how timekeeping varies among worlds and races in a space fantasy setting.
http://d20pirates.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-timeline-of-homeworld-history.html
-Nate

I agree. Cost of an item without having a rough idea of how much wealth PCs will have at certain levels is meaningless. Let's say a +3 weapon is worth 100,000 GP. If the PCs only ever accumulate 50,000 GP after other expenses they can never buy the weapon. If the PCs get a million gold pieces, then the weapon is relatively cheap.
You can't have one discussion without the other. Well, you...

Well, I think I meant as opposed to constriction. But your proposal will work. Your suggestion for the Touch of Destruction text is fine, too.
Description: A gigantic tentacle extending from a rippling hole in the air. ???
Maybe the flavor text can borrow from whatever we come up with for the full Khalk'ru, which I'd say we're pretty close to starting.

That last aside might be the main point of disagreement here: the core audience for D&D books are people who *do* like that sort of thing, either taking it wholesale or in bits and pieces as needed. It is far easier to pick through and discard parts than make something from scratch. And the people who want to make everything from scratch aren't going to buy books full of the prosiac description...

Maybe, but there's a reasonable degree of vagueness to much of the material in the book. That vagueness is appreciated when deviating from the traditional, it keeps expectations open. The more "solid" and "clear" they make the lore, the more you have to clarify where the differences are. As I wrote in the Woldbuilding thread, it's one reason to enjoy D&D, there is a wider range of possible...

Observant would suck at every level if I'm your DM, since I pretty much never do passive checks of any sort. Hopefully I mention that to you before you select it :p
And Perception's really not worth much in my game anyway, so Perceptive's likely not gonna be worth it if you're looking to optimize, either.

Do you think its a good idea to put an unbeatable monster into a combat with a PC? I doubt it (granted that there can be some particular cases where this may be acceptable, but as a general concept its frowned upon by all), right?
So isn't that an indication that there's an agency problem associated with creating no-win situations where a character will presumably die? I would say they DO take...

This has always been the case for homebrew settings. Especially since 2nd edition. The first step is to tell all potential players, thet being a homebrew setting, the lore will deviate from that featured in the D&D books. Most players will be just fine with this as it's not an innovative thing to happen.

I believe I was quite clear the entire approach is flawed, so I'm confused as to why you would bother contending this particular choice.
If one were to pursue my methodology, it would likely require the wholesale invention of new spells using the guidelines in the DMG. That's not something I'm interested in doing, and I doubt it's a task anyone else is going to undertake either. Unfortunately,...

I skipped a couple pages to catch up, but I had a weird thought akin to the moment you realize money now is just numbers in a computer.
As the DM you determine how much gold the party gets in any given encounter. As the GM you also set the prices of items (especially ones with no normal list price). So really we are setting an exchange rate of encounters to magic items.
Instead of setting...

One thing that should be reiterated here in this excellent essay is that there IS NO CAUSAL PROCESS WITHIN THE FICTION. The fact is no such person as Sherlock Holmes, no person with characteristics similar to him, can exist in the real world. This isn't even limited by just ordinary physical constraints (IE nobody can focus their attention well enough or remember things so reliably as to perform...

We are a DnD playing family, my (teen) son in particular. One week of our summer vacation will be spent in a location with very little that appeals to him, and not much more that appeals to me. (There are good reasons for this, and neither one of us are complaining; compromise is something families have to do from time to time). My son is thinking ahead and told me he'd like to attempt a one on...

Mostly published setting (Forgotten Realms). To be honest, I don't really think much about the setting beyond the given adventure. My time is limited, and world building doesn't personally appeal to me, at least not given the time restrictions I have.
There is one (rather sporadically played) adventure I DM that is closer to homebrew, although it would be more accurate to say I took a...

I use established lore, put the setting in the future, and then use it as a baseline. It is nice to draw from various editions of lore to get a general feeling for a spot. What areas are mined out, which cities are into slavery, where can somebody find cheap mercs/cut throats (luskan by the way), who worship's Bane openly, local laws, who works with adamantine, what policies are there on...

Home brew mostly, often incorporating DriveThruRPG modules that seem fun. Iíve also been running CoS with a small bit of homebree flair for one of my groups - which has been great. So, yeah, both. Either way, I am not concerned about canon, and am of the mindset that strict adherence to canon calls for more homework and less in-the-moment flexibility, hence reducing the level of fun at our...

Perhaps in the long term,but for right now, this game is explicitly separate from any book plans: stated right in the press release. Therefore, we can safely conclude Undermountain is not in any immediate book plans.

I think that having a Flame Tongue sword is considerably better than the Flame Blade spell, since we're assuming that the wielder of the Flame Tongue will be able to make multiple attacks with it and suchlike.